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Social Organization

Chapter 31: Disorganization: The Family

Charles Horton Cooley

OLD AND NEW REGIMES IN THE FAMILY -- THE DECLINING BIRTH-RATE --
"SPOILED" CHILDREN -- THE OPENING OF NEW CAREERS TO WOMEN -- EUROPEAN AND
AMERICAN POINTS OF VIEW -- PERSONAL FACTORS IN DIVORCE -- INSTITUTIONAL FACTORS --
CONCLUSION

THE mediaeval family, like other mediaeval institutions, was dominated by comparatively
settled traditions which reflected the needs of the general system of society Marriage was
thought of chiefly as an alliance of interests, and was arranged by the ruling members of
the families concerned on grounds of convenance, the personal congeniality of the
parties being little considered.

We know that this view of marriage has still considerable force among the more
conservative classes of European society, and that royalty or nobility, on the one hand,
and the peasantry, on the other, adhere to the idea that it is a family rather than a
personal function, which should be arranged on grounds of rank and wealth. In France it is
hardly respectable to make a romantic marriage, and Mr. Hamerton tells of a young woman
who was indignant at a rumor that she had been wedded for love, insisting that it had been
strictly a matter of convenance. He also mentions a young man who was compelled to
ask his mother which of two sisters he had just met was to be his wife.[1]

(357)

Along with this subordination of choice in contracting marriage generally went an
autocratic family discipline. Legally the wife and children had no separate rights, their
personality being merged in that of the husband and father, while socially the latter was
rather their master than their companion. His rule, however—though it was no doubt
harsh and often brutal, judged by our notions—authority in our day; since he was was
possibly not so arbitrary and whimsical as would be the exercise of similar himself
subordinate not only to social superiors, but still more to traditional ideas, defining
his own duties and those of his household, which he felt bound to carry out. The whole
system was authoritative, admitting little play of personal choice.

Evidently the drift of modern life is away from this state of things. The decay of
settled traditions, embracing not only those relating directly to the family but also the
religious and economic ideas by which these were supported, has thrown us back upon the
unschooled impulses of human nature. In entering upon marriage the personal tastes of the
couple demand gratification, and, right or wrong, there is no authority strong enough to
hold them in check. Nor, if upon experience it turns out that personal tastes are not
gratified, is there commonly any insuperable obstacle to a dissolution of the tie. Being
married, they have children so long as they find it, on the whole, agreeable to their
inclinations to do so, but when this point is reached they proceed to exercise choice by
refusing to bear and rear any more. And as the spirit of choice is in I the air, the
children are not slow to inhale it and to exercise their own wills in accordance with the
same law of im-

(358)-pulse their elders seem to follow. "Do as you please so long as you do not
evidently harm others " is the only rule of ethics that has much life; there is
little regard for any higher discipline, for the slowly built traditions of a deeper right
and wrong which cannot be justified to the feelings of the moment.

Among the phases of this domestic "individualism" or relapse to impulse are a
declining birthrate among the comfortable classes, some lack of discipline and respect in
children, a growing independence of women accompanied by alleged neglect of the family,
and an increase of divorce.

The causes of decline in the birthrate are clearly psychological, being, in general,
that people prefer ambition and luxury to the large families that would interfere with
them.

Freedom of opportunity diffuses a restless desire to rise in the world, beneficent from
many points of view but by no means favorable to natural increase. Men demand more of life
in the way of personal self-realization than in the past, and it takes a longer time and
more energy to get it, the consequence being that marriage is postponed and the birth-rate
in marriage deliberately restricted. The young people of the well-to-do classes, among
whom ambition is most developed, commonly feel poorer in regard to this matter than the
hand-workers, so that we find in England, for instance, that the professional men marry at
an average age of thirty-one, while miners marry at twenty-four. Moreover, while the
hand-working classes, both on the farms and in towns, expect to

(359) make their children more than pay for themselves after they are fourteen years
old, a large family thus becoming an investment for future profit, the well-to-do, on the
contrary, see in their children a source of indefinitely continuous expense. And the trend
of things is bringing an ever larger proportion of the people within the ambitious
classes
and subject to this sort of checks.

The spread of luxury, or even comfort, works in the same direction by creating tastes
and habits unfavorable to the bearing and rearing of many children. Among those whose
life, in general, is hard these things are not harder than the rest, and a certain
callousness of mind that is apt to result from monotonous physical labor renders people
less subject to anxiety, as a rule, than those who might appear to have less occasion for
it. The joy of children, the "luxury of the poor," may also appear brighter from
the dulness and hardship against which it is relieved. But as people acquire the habit, or
at least the hope, of comfort they become aware that additional children mean a sacrifice
which they often refuse to make .

These influences go hand-in-hand with that general tendency to rebel against trouble
which is involved in the spirit of choice. In former days women accepted the bearing of
children and the accompanying cares and privations as a matter of course; it did not occur
to them that anything else was possible. Now, being accustomed to choose their life, they
demand a reason why they should undergo hardships; and since the advantages which are to
follow are doubtful and remote, and the suffering near and obvious, they are not unlikely
to refuse. Too com-

(360)-monly they have no inwrought principles and training that dispose them to submit.

The distraction of choice grievously increases the actual burden and stress upon women)
for it is comparatively easy to put up with the inevitable. What with moral strain of this
sort and the anxious selection among conflicting methods of nurture and education it
possibly costs the mother of to-day more psychical energy to raise four children than it
did her grandmother to raise eight.

It would be strange if children were not hospitable to the modern sentiment that one
will is as good as another, except as the other may be demonstrably wiser in regard to the
matter in hand. Willing submission to authority as such, or sense of the value of
discipline as a condition of the larger and less obvious well-being of society, is hardly
to be expected from childish reasoning, and must come, if at all, as the unconscious
result of a training which reflects general sentiment and custom. It is institutional in
its nature, not visibly reasonable.

But the child, in our day, finds no such institution, no general state of sentiment
such as exists in Japan and existed in our own past, which fills the mind from infancy
with suggestions that parents are to be reverenced and obeyed; nor do parents ordinarily
do much to instil this by training. Probably, so great is the power of general opinion
even in childhood, they would hardly succeed if they tried, but as a rule they do not
seriously try. Being themselves accustomed to the view that authority must appeal to the
reason of the subject, they see nothing strange

(361) The fond attention which parents give to their children is often of a sort to
overstimulate their self-consequence. This constantly asking them, What would you like?
Shall we do this or that ? Where do you want to go ? and so on, though amiable on our
part, does the child little good. The old practice of keeping children at a distance,
whatever its evils, was more apt to foster reverence.

Among hand-workers, especially in the country, the work being more obvious and often
shared by the whole family, the pressure of necessary labor makes a kind of discipline for
all, and the children are more likely to see that there are rules and conditions of life
above their immediate pleasure. Social play, as we have seen, may also do much for this
perception. But this visible control of a higher law has a decreasing part in modern life,
especially with the well-to-do classes, whose labors are seldom such as children may
share, or even understand.

In this, as in so many other respects, we are approaching a higher kind of life at the
cost of incidental demoralization. The modern family at its best, with its intimate
sympathy and its discipline of love, is of a higher type than the family of an older regime.
"I never," said Thackeray, "saw people on better terms with each other,
more frank, affectionate, and cordial, than the parents and the grown-up young folks in
the United States. And why ? Because the children were spoiled, to be sure."[2]
But where this ideal is not reached, there is apt to be a somewhat disastrous failure
which makes one regret the auto-

(362)-cratic and traditional order. Not merely is discipline lacking, but the affection
which might be supposed to go with indulgence is turned to indifference, if not contempt.
As a rule we love those we can look up to, those who stand for the higher ideal. In old
days parents shared some what in that divinity with which tradition hedged the great of
the earth, and might receive a reverence not dependent upon their personality; and even
to-day they are likely to be better loved if they exact respect—just as an officer is
better loved who enforces discipline and is not too familiar with his soldiers. Human
nature needs some thing to look up to, and it is a pity when parents do not in part supply
this need for their children.

In short, the child, like the woman, helps to bear the often grievous burden of
disorganization; bears it, among the well-to-do classes, in an ill-regulated life, in lack
of reverence and love, in nervousness and petulance; as well as in premature and stunting
labor among the poor:

The opening of new careers to women and a resulting economic independence approaching
that of men is another phase of " individualism " that has its worse and better
aspects. In general it has, through the fuller self-expression of women, most beneficial
reactions both upon family life and society at large, but creates some trouble in the way
of domestic reluctance and discontent.

The disposition to reject marriage altogether may be set aside as scarcely existent.
The marriage rate shows little decline, though the average age is somewhat advanced The
wage-earning occupations of women are mostly of a temporary character, and the great
majority of domestic

(363) servants, shop and factory girls, clerks, typewriters and teachers marry sooner
or later. There is no reason to doubt that a congenial marriage continues to be the almost
universal feminine ideal.

A more real problem, perhaps is found in the excessive requirements, in the way of
comfort and refinement, that young women are said to cherish. In the United States their
education, so far as general culture is concerned, outstrips that of men, something like
three-fifths of our high school pupils being girls, while even in the higher institutions
the study of history, foreign languages and English literature is largely given over to
women. A certain sense of superiority coming from this state of things probably causes the
rejection of some honest clerks or craftsmen by girls who can hardly look for a better
offer; and it has a tendency toward the cultivation of refinement at the expense of
children where marriage does occur. It need hardly be said, however, that aggressive
idealism Oil the part of women is in itself no bad thing, and that it does harm only where
ill-directed. Hardly anything, for instance, would be more salutary than the general
enforcement by women of a higher moral standard upon the men who wish to marry them.

And certainly nothing in modern civilization is more widely and subtly beneficent than
the enlargement of women in social function. It means that a half of human nature is newly
enfranchised, instructed and enabled to become a more conscious and effective factor in
life. The ideals of home and the care of children, in spite of pessimists, are changing
for the better, and the work of women in independent careers is largely in the direction

(364) of much-needed social service education and philanthropy in the largest sense of
the words. Any one familiar with these movements knows that much of the intellectual and
most of the emotional force back of them is that of women' One may say that the maternal
instinct has been set free and organized on a vast scale, for the activities in which
women most excel are those inspired by sympathy with children and with the weak or
suffering classes.

To the continental European, accustomed to a society in which the functions and
conventions of men and women are sharply distinguished and defined by tradition, it seems
that Americans break down a natural and salutary differentiation, making women masculine
and men feminine by a too indiscriminate association and competition. No doubt there is
some ground for distinct standards and education, and in the general crumbling of
traditions and sway of a somewhat doctrinaire idea of equality some " achieved
distinctions " of value may have been lost sight of. Like other social
differentiations, however, this is one that can no longer be determined by authority, but
must work itself out in a free play of experiment. As Mr. Ellis says, "The hope of
our future civilization lies in the development, in equal freedom, of both the masculine
and feminine elements in life."[3]

Perhaps, also, the masculine element, as being on the whole more rational and stable,
should be the main source of government, keeping in order the emotionality more commonly
dominant in women: and it may appear that this controlling function is ill-performed in
America. It

(365) should be remembered, however, that with us the emancipation of women comes
chiefly from male initiative and is a voluntary fostering of das ewig Weibliche out
of love and respect for it. And also that most European societies govern women by
coercive laws or conventions and, in the lower classes, even by blows. Americans have
almost wholly foregone these extrinsic aids, aiming at a higher or voluntary discipline,
and if American women are, after all, quite as well guided, on the whole, as those of
Europe, it is no mean achievement.,

There are in general two sorts of forces, one personal and one institutional, which
hold people together in wedlock. By the personal I mean those which spring more directly
from natural impulse, and may be roughly summed up as affection and common interest in
children. The institutional are those that come more from the larger organization of
society, such as economic interdependence of husband and wife, or the state of public
sentiment, tradition and law.

As regards affection, present conditions should apparently be favorable to the strength
of the bond. Since personal choice is so little interfered with, and the whole matter
conducted with a view to congeniality, it would seem that a high degree of congeniality
must, on the whole, be secured. And, indeed, this is without much doubt the case: nowhere
probably, is there so large a proportion of couples li-ving together in love and
confidence as in those countries where marriage is most free. Even if serious friction
arises, the fact that each has chosen the other without constraint favors a sense of
responsibility for the

(366) relation, and a determination to make it succeed that might be lacking in an
arranged marriage. We know that if we do not marry happily it is our own fault, and the
more character and self-respect ~ e has e the more ~ e try to make the best of our
venture. There can hardly be a general feeling that marriage is one thing and love
another, such as may prevail under the rule of convenance.

Yet it is not inconsistent to say that this aim at love increases divorce. The theory
being that the contracting parties are to be made happy, then, if they are not, it seems
to follow that the relation is a failure and should cease: the brighter the ideal the
darker the fact by contrast. Where interest and custom rule marriage those who enter into
it may not expect congeniality, or, if they do, they feel that it is secondary and do not
dream of divorce because it is not achieved. The woman marries because her parents tell
her to, because marriage is her career, and because she desires a wedding and to be
mistress of a household; the man because he wants a household and children and is not
indifferent to the dowry. These tangible aims, of which one can be fairly secure
beforehand, give stability where love proves wanting.

And while freedom in well-ordered minds tends toward responsibility and the endeavor to
make the best of a chosen course, in the ill-ordered it is likely to become an
impulsiveness which is displayed equally in contracting and in breaking off marriage
without good cause. The conditions of our time give an easy rein to undisciplined wills,
and one index of their activity is the divorce rate. Bad training in childhood is a large
factor in this, neglected or spoiled children making bad husbands or wives, and

(367) probably furnishing the greater number of the divorced. Common observation seems
to show that the latter are seldom people of thoroughly wholesome antecedents.

It may not be amiss to add that personal affection is at tile best an inadequate
foundation for marriage. To expect that one person should make another happy or good
is requiring too much of human nature. Both parties ought to be subject to some higher
idea, in reverence for which they may rise above their own imperfection: there ought to be
something in the way of religion in the case. A remark which Goethe made of poetry might
well be applied to personal love: "It is a very good companion of life, but in no way
competent to guide it " ;[4] and because people have no higher
thought to shelter them in disappointment is frequently the reason that marriage proves a
failure.

As regards institutional bonds there is of course a great relaxation.

Thus economic interdependence declines with the advance of specialization. The home
industries are mostly gone, and every year more things are bought that used to be made in
the house. Little is left but cooking, and that, either as a task of the wife or in the
shape of the Domestic Service Question, is so troublesome that many are eager to see it
follow the rest. At one time marriage was, for women, about the only way to a respectable
maintenance, while to men a good housewife was equally an economic necessity. Now this is
true only of the farming population,

(368) and less true of them than it used to be in the towns the economic considerations
are mostly opposed to married life.

Besides making husband and wife less necessary to each other, these changes tend to
make married women restless. Nothing works more for sanity and contentment than a
reasonable amount of necessary and absorbing labor; disciplining the mind and giving one
a sense of being of use in the world. It seems a paradox to say that idleness is
exhausting, but there is much truth in it, especially in the case of sensitive and eager
spirits. A regular and necessary task rests the will by giving it assurance, while the
absence of such a task wearies it by uncertainty and futile choice. Just as a person who
follows a trail through the woods will go further with less exertion than one who is
finding his way, so we all need a foundation of routine, and the lack of this among women
of the richer classes is a chief cause of the restless, exacting, often hysterical,
spirit, harassing to its owner and every one else, which tends toward discontent,
indiscretion and divorce.

The old traditional subordination on the part of the wife had its uses, like other
decaying structures of the past; and however distasteful to modern ideas of freedom, was a
factor in holding the family together. For, after all, no social organization can be
expected to subsist without some regular system of government. We say that the modern
family is a democracy; and this sounds very well; but anarchy is sometimes a more correct
description. A well-ordered democracy has a constitution and laws, prescribing the rights
and duties of the various members of the state, and providing a method of determining con-

(369)-troversies: the family, except as we recognize within reasonable limits the
authority of the husband and father, has nothing of the sort. So long as the members are
one in mind and feeling there is an unconscious harmony which has nothing to do with
authority; but with even slight divergence comes the need of definite control. What would
happen on shipboard if the captain had to govern by mere personal ascendancy, without the
backing of maritime law and custom? Evidently there would be mutinies, as among pirate
crews, which only an uncommonly strong man could quell; and the family is often in a
similar condition.[5]

The relaxation of moral sentiment regarding marriage by migrations and other sorts of
displacement is easily traced in statistics, which show that divorce is more frequent in
new countries, in cities—peopled by migration —and in the industrial and
commercial classes most affected by economic change. To have an effective public opinion
holding people to their duty it is important that men should live long in one place and in
one group, inheriting traditional ideas and enforcing them upon one

(370) another. All breaking up of old associations involves an
"individualism" which is nowhere more active than in family relations.

The same principles go to explain diminished control by the law and the church. Thus we
notice that the states of the American Union, having made their marriage laws in
comparative independence of the English tradition and in harmony with a relaxing public
sentiment, have much divorce; while in Canada the restraining hand of that tradition has
kept the law conservative and made divorce difficult and rare. The surprising contrast in
this regard between the two sides of the Detroit or St. Lawrence rivers is only partly
explained by the different social traits of the people.

Christian teaching is the chief source of the ideal of marriage as a sacred and almost
indissoluble bond, and church organization has been the main agent in enforcing this
ideal. The Roman Catholic church has never admitted the possibility of absolute divorce,
and to her authority, chiefly, is due its absence in Spain and Italy; while in England the
Established Church, not much behind Rome in strictness, has been perhaps the chief cause
of conservatism in English law and sentiment. And the other Protestant churches, though
more liberal, are conservative in comparison with the drift of popular feeling. So the
fact, needless to discuss in this connection, that the disciplinary authority of the
church has declined, makes directly for the increase of divorce.

The relaxation of the family is due, then, to changes progressive on the whole, but
involving much incidental

(371) demoralization; being in general those arising from a somewhat rapid decay of old
traditions and disciplines and a consequent dependence upon human impulse and reason.

The evil involved is largely old evil in a new form; it is not so much that new
troubles have arisen between husband and wife as that a new remedy is sought for old ones.
They quarreled and marriage vows were broken quite as much in former times as now, as much
in England today as in America: the main difference is in the outcome.

Moreover, the matter has its brighter side; for divorce though full of evils, is
associated with a beneficent rise in the standing of women, of which it is to a certain
degree the cause. The fact that law and opinion now permit women to revolt against the
abuse of marital power operates widely and subtly to increase their self-respect and the
respect of others for them, and like the right of workmen to strike, does most of its good
without overt exercise.

Notes

That the increase of divorces is due chiefly to the initiative of the wife is seen in
the fact that as they become more numerous an increasing proportion is granted at the
instance of the woman. Under the old regime the divorcing of a husband was almost
unknown, the first ease in England oeeurring in 1801. (See the essay on Marriage and
Divorce in Mr. Bryce's Studies in History and Jurisprudence.) In the United States a great
preponderance are now granted to wives, and the greater the total rate the greater this
preponderance. In those states where the rate is highest the proportion iB from
two-thirds to three-fourths. It is not far wrong to say that the old idea of
divorce was to rid the husband of an unfaithful wife, the new is to rid the wife of
an uncongenial or troublesome husband.

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